Some of the comments at Amazon are critical of some of the fictional characters and their interactions, but there appears to be reasonable support for my view that the science is very well done indeed.

The theme of the book is perfectly matched to the topic of this section of Dr. Dartnell's forum.

Six people with a variety of reasonably predictable technologies and a collection of frozen embryos are placed on a marginally earth-like world far away from Earth.

Because Mr. Lerner's academic preparation includes economics along with physics and computer science, I decided to write this post about Mr. Lerner's assertion that a group of 6 people cannot have an "economy". While there is room to quibble, the assertion led me to wonder if anyone has thought about the question of how many people it would take to have a "economy" that Adam Smith would recognize.

Certainly in "Dark Secret" the characters establish appropriate levels of Division of Labor, and as the story progresses the characters certainly seem to my eye to express the "Invisible Hand" by pursuing their personal best interests within the context of their labors to insure the survival of the group.

(th)

May every member of The Knowledge forum grow financially, intellectually, socially and beyond.

This location is well inland, so I'm guessing it reflects a city that grew up away from the inlet that leads to the sea. Google Earth shows another location called Bahia Blanca that is very near the coast.

The aerial view shows that the expedition was moving well along the path to the southernmost tip of South America.

(th)

May every member of The Knowledge forum grow financially, intellectually, socially and beyond.

On this day in 1520, the Magellan Expedition is under way, passing East of Bahia Blanca, Brazil.

The next event in the voyage will be a land fall on February 27th, next Monday.

From an online discussion of the Magellan Expedition, I picked up the insight that the fleet sailed during the day time along the coast, and paused at night. That practice would seem sensible to me if land is nearby, but I'm sure it was NOT continued after the expedition struck out across the Pacific. Another insight from the same resource was that Magellan chose a path across the Pacific that managed to miss a plethora of islands to the South, so that the voyage took 98 days, and the crew was sorely tested.

***The purpose of this thread is to anchor consideration of development of human civilization away from Earth. However, so much is going on in the forum and outside of it, that I have almost no time left for advancement of the other references at the top of this thread.

I would like to note the achievement of the SpaceX company under Elon Musk. They successfully launched a Falcon 9 from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center, and landed the first stage back on land near the launch point. The satellite was in progress toward the International space Station at this writing.

(th)

May every member of The Knowledge forum grow financially, intellectually, socially and beyond.

The next landfall is reported as 49 degrees 30 minutes South, on March 31st. Google Earth reports this location as Puerto San Julian at S49 degrees 18 minutes.

The Expedition record of 49 degrees 30 minutes south does not correspond to the GPS coordinates reported today. The difference may be accounted for by the limitations of the mechanical navigation instruments of the day.

***Since the purpose of this thread is to consider alternative futures for humans expanding away from Earth, and since the technology of atom assemblers has been introduced previously as a logical and attractive way for a community away from Earth to maintain a high technology while at the same time distributing the means of production equitably across the population, I would like to focus today on the mundane topic of shaver blades. I am guessing that an atom assembler might take a week to make a very high quality shaver blade. A member of the population might decide to specialize in production of shaver blades, and might accumulate enough atom assemblers to meet the demand of a part of the population. In accordance with the principle of capitalistic competition, there would presumably be at least two others who would specialize in such blades, so that the overall need would be met.

The proprietors of shops to manufacture high quality shaver blades would spend their working time gathering raw materials (such as used shaver blades), preparing them for rendering as raw material for the atom assemblers, packaging the completed blades for sale, and negotiating sales.

Others in the community would assume responsibility for understanding the atom assemblers themselves, and managing the software to create designs which are acceptable to buyers.

These others would presumably build compete atom assembler machines, which might take a standard year to complete, and in accordance with the principles of competition, there would be at least three organizations developing and delivering these systems.

(th)

May every member of The Knowledge forum grow financially, intellectually, socially and beyond.

The next landfall is reported as 49 degrees 30 minutes South, on March 31st. Google Earth reports this location as Puerto San Julian at S49 degrees 18 minutes.

The Expedition record of 49 degrees 30 minutes south does not correspond to the GPS coordinates reported today. The difference may be accounted for by the limitations of the mechanical navigation instruments of the day.

***Since the purpose of this thread is to consider alternative futures for humans expanding away from Earth, and since the technology of atom assemblers has been introduced previously as a logical and attractive way for a community away from Earth to maintain a high technology while at the same time distributing the means of production equitably across the population, I would like to focus today on the mundane topic of pins. Adam Smith spend several pages in his "Wealth of Nations" considering the Distribution of Labor as expressed in a pin making factory of his time. I am guessing that an atom assembler might take a day to make a very high quality pin, whether with a flat head for holding fabric, or a more complex needle for routing thread. A member of the population might decide to specialize in production of pins of various kinds, and might accumulate enough atom assemblers to meet the demand of a part of the population. In accordance with the principle of capitalistic competition, there would presumably be at least two others who would specialize in such pins, so that the overall need would be met.

The proprietors of shops to manufacture high quality pins and needles would spend their working time gathering raw materials (such as used pins), preparing them for rendering as raw material for the atom assemblers, packaging the completed items for sale, and negotiating sales.

Others in the community would assume responsibility for understanding the atom assemblers themselves, and managing the software to create designs which are acceptable to buyers.

These others would presumably build compete atom assembler machines, which might take a standard year to complete, and in accordance with the principles of competition, there would be at least three organizations developing and delivering these systems.

(th)

May every member of The Knowledge forum grow financially, intellectually, socially and beyond.

The next landfall is reported as 49 degrees 30 minutes South, on March 31st. Google Earth reports this location as Puerto San Julian at S49 degrees 18 minutes.

The Expedition record of 49 degrees 30 minutes south does not correspond to the GPS coordinates reported today. The difference may be accounted for by the limitations of the mechanical navigation instruments of the day.

***Since the purpose of this thread is to consider alternative futures for humans expanding away from Earth, and since the technology of atom assemblers has been introduced previously as a logical and attractive way for a community away from Earth to maintain a high technology while at the same time distributing the means of production equitably across the population, I would like to invite readers to imagine how an economy based upon widely distributed atom assemblers would operate. The income inequality we see on Earth in 2017 seems (to me at least) to be an understandable and inevitable consequence of the principles of Capitalism, which include Specialization, the Division of Labor, competition between individuals and organizations, and a constant effort to drive costs down as low as possible in order to secure orders from customers who are always looking for the best price, and occasionally are looking for quality at a slightly higher price. Because the means of production in 2017 tend to belong to large organizations with massive collective resources, it is (it seems to me) inevitable that those who control those organizations will naturally see to it that the fruits of sales are funneled disproportionately into their pockets. How could it be otherwise? It is very rare indeed for individuals who control large organizations to forego wealth for themselves, in order to share the wealth of the capitalist system with the workers who make it possible.

(th)

Last edited by tahanson43206 on Mon Mar 20, 2017 6:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

May every member of The Knowledge forum grow financially, intellectually, socially and beyond.

The next landfall is reported as 49 degrees 30 minutes South, on March 31st. Google Earth reports this location as Puerto San Julian at S49 degrees 18 minutes.

The Expedition record of 49 degrees 30 minutes south does not correspond to the GPS coordinates reported today. The difference may be accounted for by the limitations of the mechanical navigation instruments of the day.

***Since the purpose of this thread is to consider alternative futures for humans expanding away from Earth, and since the technology of atom assemblers has been introduced previously as a logical and attractive way for a community away from Earth to maintain a high technology while at the same time distributing the means of production equitably across the population, I would like to focus today on the topic of long term digital data storage. Elsewhere in the Forum, Dave Z has recently reviewed the current status of work on using DNA (or similar chemical structures) to hold large amounts of data for extended periods. Results to date seem promising. Wide spread adoption and use of the techniques under study may be a few years away.

As an alternative, I'd like to introduce the idea of creating a "memory thread" of a stream of three kinds of atoms which would encode the very simple 300 baud protocol which became popular in the years just before the invention of the Internet. The Bell 103 modem dates to 1962. The Bell 101 dataset dates to 1958. It ran at a rate of 110 baud.

Begin Quotation:The committee considered an eight-bit code, since eight bits (octets) would allow two four-bit patterns to efficiently encode two digits with binary-coded decimal. However, it would require all data transmission to send eight bits when seven could suffice. The committee voted to use a seven-bit code to minimize costs associated with data transmission. Since perforated tape at the time could record eight bits in one position, it also allowed for a parity bit for error checking if desired.[1]:217, 236 § 5 Eight-bit machines (with octets as the native data type) that did not use parity checking typically set the eighth bit to 0.[26] In some printers, the high bit was used to enable Italics printing.End Quotation.

The element I would like to call out from the quotation above is the option to use the 8th bit as a parity bit, which was an elementary form of data integrity checking. Far more sophisticated data integrity systems have evolved over the years since, and indeed, I would expect them to be used in the data storage system this message is intended to describe.

The storage system I would like to propose here could be implemented in a first generation of Atom Assemblers. It would extrude a thread of atoms with three optically identifiable characteristics, so that a base state would provide a base for sequential location and spacing of information carrying elements. Of the two atoms types to be blended into an alloy with the base material, one would represent a one bit or an ON state, while the other bit would represent a zero bit or an OFF state.

While the encoding of data using this system would normally be quite slow, reading of the resulting thread might be much faster. What I am concerned with in this design, is planning for the simplest possible means of decoding the stored data after thousands of years of storage. The atoms chosen would have distinctive spectrographic signatures, so that a person (human or otherwise) could pull out the data a bit at a time by examining the thread under a microscope.

The base atoms would be chosen for strength and durability, and for chemical compatibility with the two data atom types to be bonded with the base.

Edited 2017/03/21

After reviewing a description of the method of data encoding chosen for USB, prepared by Jan Axelson in her book "USB Complete Fourth Edition", I realized that the information storage system based upon sequences of atoms is NOT limited to the restricted environment of serial communications in electronic devices.

Instead, there are ample supplies of atoms of various kinds that may be considered for the application.